The Technology Behind Cinematic Photos
There has been some work by teams at Google looking at analysing images to extract their 3D features. They launched a new feature called 'cinematic photos' and this blog posted by Per Karlsson and Lucy Yu, Software Engineers, of Google Research tries to explain how it works. "Looking at photos from...
Source: googleblog.com
'How many dead bodies?' asked Myanmar protester killed on bloodiest day
Shocking news from Myanmar reported by Reuters. "The day before he was killed, internet network engineer Nyi Nyi Aung Htet Naing had posted on Facebook about the increasingly violent military crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Myanmar." "“#How_Many_Dead_Bodies_UN_Need_To_Take_Action,” he wrote,...
Source: reuters.com
Covid: Bedfordshire counselling service sees rise in caseload
Demand for help from a youth counselling service will "continue to rise" during the pandemic.
Source: bbc.com
Rocket Report Cornwall
Cornwall says “LOL, no” to space tourism. "If we're being blunt about it ... One council member, John Fitter, was more explicit, saying, 'If we were to entertain this, it would be quite ridiculous and send out the wrong message to those people in Cornwall who could possibly be suffering on below...
Source: arstechnica.com
Cornish couple feel 'discriminated against' over wedding language
"Steph Norman and Aaron Willoughby cannot have their ceremony entirely in Cornish." Apparently they could conduct it English obviously but also in Welsh (which is close to Cornish) but it highlights the lack of legal formality to the Cornish language.
Source: bbc.com
The Edge: Where Ed Tech’s $2-Billion Year Leaves Colleges
It’s not too late to pay attention to something perennially missing from these booms: whether the tools are working.
Source: chronicle.com
Open Access, Conspiracy Theories and the Democratization of Knowledge
The Scholarly Kitchen "We are in the middle of a new political dynamic here in the US – one that has been building for over a decade. This new dynamic has meant that science and scientists are being viewed with a level of distrust – and even, at times, hostility – that is unprecedented in modern...
Source: sspnet.org
Most brain activity is "background noise"
"Most brain activity is "background noise" and that's upending our understanding of consciousness." This complexity view of the mind is not new but this article explains it quite clearly.
Source: salon.com
Why Are COVID-19 Case Numbers Dropping?
"We don’t know. That part is easy. Also easy is that case numbers really are falling — it’s not just reduced testing — and it’s happening pretty much everywhere. Urban areas and rural. Red states and blue. Places with broad vaccine rollouts and those with hardly any. North and South America,...
Source: jwatch.org
Climate Change: Government may review road-building policy
It follows a legal challenge from campaigners, who argue the policy does not fit with climate targets.
Source: bbc.com
Microsoft Teams AI could tell you who is most enjoying your video call
Researchers at Microsoft have developed an AI for the firm's Teams videoconferencing software that highlights positive audience reactions during a virtual presentation
Source: newscientist.com
NHS sets up mental health hubs for staff traumatised by Covid
Forty hubs in England will field calls from frontline staff and contact those at higher risk directly
Source: theguardian.com
Reconstructing the Menu of a Pub in Ancient Pompeii
When in Rome ... or Pompeii. "Eat like a first-century Roman, using recent archaeological discoveries as your guide." "In consideration of some of this evidence, if we were to hypothesize that what we’ve read in the Latin literary record about “boiled meat,” “broth and chunks of meat,” and...
Source: atlasobscura.com
Google fires Margaret Mitchell, co-lead of its Ethical AI team
"Last December, Gebru was fired from Google after she tried to be outspoken about unethical AI. This prompted some 225 Google employees to club together to create a union, in the hope of preventing further unfair dismissal and protecting employee rights. Mitchell was a member of said union, but that...
Source: techspot.com
AI uses "ugly duckling" technique to spot melanoma with high accuracy
"Artificial intelligence is starting to combine with smartphone technology in ways that could have profound impacts on the way we monitor health, from tracking blood volume changes in diabetics to detecting concussions by filming the eyes." "Using the technology to spot melanoma in its early stages is...
Source: newatlas.com
Python pioneer assesses the 30-year-old programming language
At age 30, the Python programming language has never been used by more developers across more use cases than it is today.
Source: venturebeat.com
Using the right tools for the job
Since this blog has been up I've fiddled with some text analysis stuff by analysing the text and making recommendations for similar blog entries. Did it all in PHP and MySQL just to understand how the algorithms work. Eventually it started to take about 5 hours to: tokenise and stemming the textcalculate...
Dreadful user experience can be expensive.
"Citibank just got a $500 million lesson in the importance of UI design: Citibank was trying to make $7.8M in interest payments. It sent $900M instead." The screenshot is from court records where the judge ruled against Citibank who had wanted to get their money back. The lesson is to always include...
Source: arstechnica.com
The 10 Biggest Trends in Entrepreneurship to Look For in 2021
Want to know what’s in store for entrepreneurs in 2021? Here’s a rundown of the top ten trends every entrepreneur should know about.
Source: neilpatel.com
Australian news app beats Facebook in App Store
"Take that Facebook. A homegrown app from Australia Broadcasting Company (ABC) topped iOS download charts in Australia, outpacing Facebook. That's important for one big reason: Facebook just banned news from appearing on Australian newsfeeds in response to a law that would require the social giant...
Source: mashable.com
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